No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
The etymology of the term is certainly much older than the nation-state, but also entirely disconnected from modern meanings (or ironic/facetious, which I do appreciate). There is just no original, clean, virtuous instance of "patriot" dislodged from the nationalist undertones. It simply has never existed.
The mistake you're making is assuming that US revolutionaries weren't nationalists or were praiseworthy or fundamentally different than British colonists. We're going to disagree on that one. I mean, never mind that they didn't invent the term or that their whitewashing of it was self-serving. Even if your timeline of events was true, I despise their patriotism as much as anybody else's. US revolutionaries weren't some ideal version of a patriot, they were nationalist independentists who happened to borrow some French revolutionary ideas about the liberal democratic state-nation organization slightly earlier than their previous administration did (and perhaps due to the first draft nature of the thing, slightly worse, too).
I won't judge them by modern standards, but I also absolutely, entirely refuse to sacralize them or idealize them. They were what they were, and they are absolutely not the thing that's going to give patriotism a good name.
You're putting words in my mouth saying that I said American revolutionaries were great people. I never said such a thing, nor would I. Stop reading more into what I said than I actually said please.
They were people willing to lay their lives down for something they thought was worth fighting for. Not out of some ignorance that the status quo is the best option, but because they wanted to make changes to improve things for their community (and their self too, sure). That's what patriotism is.
I'd argue that it's necessarily not pristine. You have to be willing to get dirty. You don't win a war with honor. You win it by killing other people until the other side isn't fighting anymore. The same is true for any fight (not the killing necessarily, but being willing to do what needs to be done).
I just brought them up as an example of patriotism though. I'm not saying they're a perfect example, just an example. This isn't about the US, like you're making it to be. You're not arguing against the point. Your entire comment can be boiled down to "American revolutionaries are bad" but it doesn't say really anything about patriotism.
Anyway, my point is, don't let nationalists take the term. Maybe you don't, but most people have positive opinions if the term. It's easier and more useful to take the term back, because it isn't necessarily a nationalist term. There are plenty of leftist patriots throughout history and the world. The right is good at using language as a weapon. We should be too, and we shouldn't back off every time they try to use it.
OK, so it's just nationalism, then.
I have a real problem trying to wrap my head around where you're drawing that line. Is the problem that "patriots" honestly believe they're making things better? Because it seems to me that the difference that leaves between a nationalist and a patriot is whether you agree with them.
From the side of the victors it's easy to see slightly morally flawed patriots where, had things gone the other way, people would see nationalist zealots.
I'm also surprised at you bringing up left and right divides. There are plenty of violent nationalists across the spectrum. I mean, it's definitely true that traditional leftists were internationalists (hell, left-wing movements organized in "internationals" and that's also the name of their anthem). So historically yeah, right wingers are more patriotic/nationalistic, but there's no shortage of left wing nationalists, either.
I don't know, man, I struggle to share your very US-centric view, but also to see how anywhere in there is a distinction between those two terms. If patriots are just nationalists you like then you start to sound a lot like one.
The difference is basically a nationalist thinks they're superior. They don't care about facts or anything, the just know they are the best. A patriot knows they can learn from others and improve things. They're trying to improve things, not just force themselves on others.
I know I've said this so many times now, but you keep just wanting to say it's the same as nationalism. This is my last reply I think because you just keep insisting I'm saying things I'm not.
I used examples from the US. None of what I said had anything to do with the US outside of examples. I didn't say this is only the case in the US or anything like that. Again, you keep putting words in my mouth. Argue in good faith or don't at all. You're just wasting both of our time.
OK, so the difference is a nationalist is a supremacist and a patriot is not.
So I'm back to my original statement, then. Patriotism sucks. Call it what you want, but allegiance to specifically a nation, nation-state or whatever construct you're assigning special status is bad and I actively oppose it.
I'm not arguing in bad faith, I'm disagreeing. But you made it seem like we don't actually disagree and like you had a distinction that made patriotism not match the thing I'm saying is bad, so I want to understand if that's the case. It doesn't seem to be the case. You think patriotism is not a problem and think my negative characterization is of nationalism instead.
Let me be clear, it is not.
The patriotism you're talking about? The lovey-dovey "improve your country and learn from others" patriotism? It sucks. That's what I'm saying here.
I'm also saying it's just whitewashed nationalism and that your distinction between supremacist nationalism and patriotic nationalism is superficial at best an non-existant at worst. Sure, not all nationalists or patriots are equally toxic, but that doesn't mean the concept of patriotism is salvageable into something positive.
You owe no allegiance to your nation, beyond what ties you culturally to the groups of people that live within it. Just like you don't owe allegiance to your hometown beyond the same concerns. Or, you know, to the planet.
You wanting to improve any one of those scales of human organization isn't any better or worse than the other, and the mere fact of implying any special relevant to one of them is a brand of nationalism I just don't find justified. It's a bit like religion. It can be well-intentioned and genuine, but in the long view of history it is undeniably an irrational, toxic force at the core of many atrocities. I will respect it and your right to participate in it, because the alternative is worse, but I won't take part in it and I don't think it's a good thing.